How to Be a Grown-Up

Rory McGovern is entering the prime of her life when her husband loses his dream job and announces he feels like "taking a break". Rory was already spread thin and now, without warning, she is single-parenting two kids, juggling their science projects, flu season, and pajama days, while coming to terms with her disintegrating marriage. Without Blake, her only hope is to accept a full-time position working for two full-time 20-somethings.

So Close

Amanda Beth Luker has spent her whole life desperately looking for someone who can show her the way out of her trailer park Florida town. And then, finally, help arrives - in the form of Tom Davis, a successful lawyer with political aspirations who grew up just a few towns over from Amanda. But it's his wife, Lindsay, who really captures Amanda's imagination. Strong, smart, and determined, she gives Amanda something she's never had: a role model.

The Night the Lights Went Out

Recently divorced, Merilee Talbot Dunlap moves with her two children to the Atlanta suburb of Sweet Apple, Georgia. It's not her first time starting over, but her efforts at a new beginning aren't helped by an anonymous local blog that dishes about the scandalous events that caused her marriage to fail.

The One That Got Away: A Novel

Abbey Lahey is a married, harried working mother of two, struggling to make ends meet in a blue-collar suburb of Philadelphia. When a tumble down a Nordstrom escalator lands her in an alternate reality, Abbey finds herself happily married to the one who got away - a dashing Philly blueblood she met briefly years earlier - and living a Cinderella life of privilege and luxury.

The First Affair: A Novel

Jamie McAlister has resigned herself to the fact that in this job market, her painfully expensive degree might only get her a position at Starbucks, when she suddenly lands a prestigious internship at the White House. Although she doesn’t hit it off with the other interns, she is eager to work hard and make the best of the opportunity while it lasts. An unexpected encounter late one evening with the charismatic President Gregory Rutland seems like just a fleeting flirtation, but when he orchestrates clandestine meetings and late-night phone calls, their relationship quickly escalates....

The Arrangement: A Novel

When friends at a wine-soaked dinner party reveal they've made their marriage open, sensible Lucy balks. There's a part of her, though, that's intrigued. Why not try a short marital experiment? Six months, clear ground rules, zero questions asked. When an affair with a man in the city begins to seem more enticing than the happily ever after she's known for the past nine years, Lucy must decide what truly makes her happy - real life or the experiment?

My Not So Perfect Life: A Novel

Everywhere Katie Brenner looks, someone else is living the life she longs for, particularly her boss, Demeter Farlowe. Demeter is brilliant and creative, lives with her perfect family in a posh townhouse, and wears the coolest clothes. Katie's life, meanwhile, is a daily struggle - from her dismal rental to her oddball flatmates to the tense office politics she's trying to negotiate. No wonder Katie takes refuge in not-quite-true Instagram posts, especially as she's desperate to make her dad proud.

Falling Home

Cassie Madison has it all: A high-powered advertising career; a stylish Manhattan apartment; and a sophisticated, rich, and gorgeous fiancé. It's a far cry from her childhood in Walton, Georgia, home of the annual Kudzu Festival and hot, sticky summers. And then there are all the bad memories, the heartache. When Cassie's estranged sister calls to say that her father is dying, Cassie knows it's time to set aside her feelings and go home and face the sister she hasn't seen in 15 years.

Opening Belle: A Novel

In 2008, Isabelle - a self-made 30-something Wall Street star - appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a handsome husband, and a high-powered job. But her reality is something else. Her trading-desk work environment resembles a 1980s frat party, her husband feels employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare and homecare still falls in Belle's already full lap.

According to a Source: A Novel

Ella Warren loves her job working for celebrity news magazine The Life as an undercover reporter. Her evenings are spent using her alias to discreetly attend red carpet events, nightclubs, and Hollywood hotspots like the fabulous Chateau Marmont, where her eyes are always peeled for the next big celebrity story. When Ella's new Devil Wears Prada-type boss starts a not-so-friendly competition among the reporters to find an exclusive story or be fired, the stakes are higher than ever.

On Second Thought

Ainsley O'Leary is so ready to get married - she's even found the engagement ring her boyfriend has stashed away. What she doesn't anticipate is for Eric to blindside her with a tactless breakup he chronicles in a blog - which (of course) goes viral. Devastated and humiliated, Ainsley turns to her half sister, Kate, who's already struggling after the sudden loss of her new husband.

The Identicals: A Novel

Harper Frost is laid back, easygoing. She doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. She likes a beer and a shot and wouldn't be caught dead wearing anything fashionable. She's inherited her father's run-down house on Martha's Vineyard, but she can't hold down a job, and her latest romantic disaster has the entire island talking. Tabitha Frost is dignified, refined. She prefers a fine wine and has inherited the impeccable taste of her mother, the iconic fashion designer Eleanor Roxie-Frost.

The Real Real

Imagine there was never a Laguna Beach, a Newport Harbor, the shimmering Hills. Imagine that your hometown - your school - is the first place XTV descends to set up cameras. Now imagine they've trained them on you. When Jesse O'Rourke gets picked for a "documentary" being filmed at her school in the Hamptons she's tempted to turn down the offer. But there's a tuition check attached to being on the show, and Jesse needs the cash so she can be the first in her family to attend college.

A Long Time Gone

When Vivien Walker left her home in the Mississippi Delta, she swore never to go back, as generations of the women in her family had. But in the spring, nine years to the day since she'd left, that's exactly what happens - Vivien returns, fleeing from a broken marriage and her lost dreams for children. What she hopes to find is solace with "Bootsie", her dear grandmother who raised her, a Walker woman with a knack for making everything all right. But instead she finds that her grandmother has died and that her estranged mother is drifting further away from her memories.

The Singles Game

Charlotte "Charlie" Silver has always been a good girl. She excelled at tennis early, coached by her father, a former player himself, and soon became one of the top juniors in the world. When she leaves UCLA - and breaks her boyfriend's heart - to turn pro, Charlie joins the world's best athletes, who travel 11 months a year, competing without mercy for Grand Slam titles and Page Six headlines.

Pretty Much Screwed

For Charlotte Crawford, the worst part about being dumped after 20 years of marriage is that her husband, Jack, doesn't want another woman; he just doesn't want her. Forty-two and clueless, Charlotte is a fish out of water in a dating pool teeming with losers. Just when she thinks she's finally put her failed marriage behind her, it comes back to bite her in the ass...hard. Without warning, Charlotte finds herself staring down the barrel of a future she wouldn't (she would totally) wish on her worst enemy.

The Sunshine Sisters

Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters. As soon as possible, tomboy Nell fled her mother's overbearing presence to work on a farm and find her own way in the world as a single mother. The target of her mother's criticism, Meredith never felt good enough, thin enough, pretty enough. Her life took her to London - and into the arms of a man whom she may not even love.

First Comes Love: A Novel

In a dazzling, delightful new novel that's quintessential Emily Giffin, the number one New York Times best-selling author of Something Borrowed, Where We Belong, and The One & Only introduces a pair of 30-something sisters who find themselves asking: If love, marriage, and children don't arrive in the usual order, which comes first?

Swept Away

Jennifer Chaise is proud of her life. Coming from nothing, she's used her beauty to her advantage and is swept up in a glamorous world of wealth and privilege as the mistress of a high-flying businessman. But when she walks in on a violent scene in their Las Vegas hotel room, Jennifer knows she can no longer ignore the truth about her boyfriend, and she flees. Desperate to escape the men searching for her, she invents a whole new persona - with a new look and a new name - as she hides out in a small Nevada town.

Here's to Us

Celebrity chef Deacon Thorpe has always been a force of nature with an insatiable appetite for life. But after that appetite contributes to Deacon's shocking death in his favorite place on earth, a ramshackle Nantucket summer cottage, his (messy, complicated) family is reeling. Now Deacon's three wives, his children, and his best friend gather on the island he loved to say farewell.

On Folly Beach

Folly Beach, South Carolina, has survived despite hurricanes and war. But it's the personal battles of Folly Beach's residents that have left the most scars, and they are why a young widow has been beckoned there to heal her own. To most people, Folly Beach is simply the last barrier island before reaching the great Atlantic. To some, it's a sanctuary for lost souls, which is why Emmy Hamilton's mother encourages her to buy a local bookstore, Folly's Finds, hoping it will distract Emmy from the loss of her husband.

Slightly South of Simple: Peachtree Bluff, Book 1

Caroline Murphy swore she'd never set foot back in the small Southern town of Peachtree Bluff; she was a New York girl born and bred and the worst day of her life was when, in the wake of her father's death, her mother selfishly forced her to move - during her senior year of high school, no less - back to that hick-infested rat trap where she'd spent her childhood summers.

Nine Women, One Dress: A Novel

Natalie is a Bloomingdale's salesgirl mooning over her lawyer ex-boyfriend, who's engaged to someone else after just two months. Felicia has been quietly in love with her boss for 17 years and has one night to finally make the feeling mutual. Andie is a private detective who specializes in gathering evidence on cheating husbands - a skill she unfortunately learned from her own life - and lands a case that may restore her faith in true love.

The Life She Wants

In the aftermath of her financier husband's suicide, Emma Shay Compton's dream life is shattered. Richard Compton stole his clients' life savings to fund a lavish life in New York City, and, although she was never involved in the business, Emma bears the burden of her husband's crimes. She is left with nothing. Only one friend stands by her, a friend she's known since high school, who encourages her to come home to Sonoma County. But starting over isn't easy, and Sonoma is full of unhappy memories, too.

Publisher's Summary

From the authors of the number-one New York Times best seller The Nanny Diaries comes a new novel that takes listeners behind the scenes of stratospheric celebrity - what it means to be worshipped by millions and still feel loved by none.

Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus have proven again and again that they are masters at exploring the subtle nuances of family relationships - as they intersect with the most current trends in the culture at large.

In Between You and Me, twenty-seven-year-old Logan Wade has built a life for herself in New York City, far from her unhappy childhood in Oklahoma. But when she gets the call that her famous cousin needs a new assistant, it's an offer she can't refuse. Logan hasn't seen Kelsey since they were separated as kids; in the meantime, Kelsey Wade has become one of Fortune magazine's most powerful celebrities and carrion for the paparazzi.

But the joy at their reunion is overshadowed by the toxic dynamic between Kelsey and her controlling parents. As Kelsey grasps desperately at a "real" life, Logan risks everything to try and give her cousin the one thing she has never known - happiness. As Kelsey unravels in the most horribly public way Logan finds that she will ultimately have to choose between saving her cousin and saving herself.

What the Critics Say

"McLaughlin and Kraus explore the dark side of fame...and provide an empathetic backstory to the sorts of salacious tales that readers see in the tabloids." (Publishers Weekly)

"Pop culture aficionados will see plenty of parallels to Britney Spears' meteoric rise and downward spiral in Kelsey's story, and they'll enjoy McLaughlin and Kraus' unflinching look at the price of fame." (Booklist)